


Starlight

by Ocelotting, RS_Games



Series: Cader Idris [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Community: rs_games, F/F, Fix-It, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Prisoner of Azkaban, R/S Games 2017, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 07:58:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12207066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ocelotting/pseuds/Ocelotting, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RS_Games/pseuds/RS_Games
Summary: R/S Games 2017 - Day 1 - Team Remus‘Remus Lupin, undercover werewolf in patched robes paces up, down, down again, left, right, around and up, the same thoughts going round and round his mind until Hogwarts shifts the corridors around to take him back to his rooms and to bed.’Can be read as a sequel to ‘Organized Winged Letter-Carriers’.





	Starlight

**Author's Note:**

> Unutterably lovely art by Humanveil is here: 
> 
> http://humanveil.tumblr.com/post/166171155127
> 
> Made my day/week/year.

**_Summer 1997_ **

**HOGWARTS**

Hogwarts hides her age. She’s on her twelfth name and if you think she was founded in 990 she’s got a bridge to sell you. She’s half as old as time. She was there before Stonehenge, before the Pyramids, before the Flood, and Fawkes is right, she’s never abided curfews.

At night, even on proper dark nights when the clouds hide the moon, she turns people restless and drives them from their beds. Even when there’s a curfew and a murderer called Sirius Black on the loose.

McGonagall goes round to Flitwick’s for a wee dram and a game of whist and to ask again how they never noticed, because there must have been signs, they should have seen them.

The ghosts fly along looking for fresh spider silk for their beds – ‘my nerves sweetie, I simply cannot rest’.

Hagrid takes to sleeping outside his hut like a guard-dog, playing over and over again in his mind how he let Sirius - ‘No, not Sirius – Black’ - escape.

Filch dredges the corridors for trouble, mangy cat following in his wake.

**REMUS**

Remus Lupin, undercover werewolf in patched robes paces up, down, down again, left, right, around and up, the same thoughts going round and round his mind until Hogwarts shifts the corridors around to take him back to his rooms and to bed.

**SIRIUS**

It rains all July. Days when the sun’s never seen, and it’s just a battering down. One day in a northern town it hails and people rush into shops and say ‘fancy that’ as a gaunt black dog runs past them.

Padfoot runs east and north towards Hogwarts, keeping away from people when he can, his mind filling up with dog-memories: the sounds of living things not screaming or crying, the smells of squirrels and sausages and things buried in the mud, the precise feeling of gravel under his paws. He’s got the dog’s loyal drive, but not human memory and guilt yet, so he runs, sleeps under hedges and in sheds, eats rats, and doesn't worry.

Day follows night follows day. He gets stronger and faster and falls into an easy, loping style that’ll take him straight to the Shrieking Shack on a full moon night and the slow end of his hopes.

**AZKABAN**

There are cracks in the walls of Azkaban now, leaks in its roof. One more shove and it could all fall down. If one prisoner can escape they all might and if the Dementors cannot feed then they will starve. The East wind and the salt spray find ways in.

**REMUS**

‘If I get lucky’, he thinks, ‘they’ll find him dead soon. Drowned and washed up on the shore - he loved the sea, let it take him’.

**SIRIUS**

A cloud passes over the moon, a capercaillie calls out, Padfoot turns left instead of right and into the path of a car that sends him flying and breaks his leg.

**HOGWARTS**

Fawkes has taken to flying around the castle, slow circuits every dawn.

‘What are you looking for?’ Dumbledore asks.

‘Peace of mind’ Fawkes says.

‘Tell me if you find it’ Dumbledore says.

Scabbers burrows deeper into Ron’s pockets. He’s safe from Crookshanks here, safe from Padfoot and from Moony.  He keeps very still and very quiet and he hopes. He’s a good rat, he’s always been a good rat.

**REMUS**

That night Remus dreams of Sirius again. Pitter patter, pitter patter comes the rain and the house elves scamper outside his door and the rats whisper to each other but Remus does not wake up.

**SIRIUS**

That night Padfoot doesn’t sleep. Wizards and dogs can die by natural causes and Padfoot so dearly wants to give in, but he can't he can’t so picks himself up and stumbles three-legged on, the only living soul on that dreich Highland road.

**HOGWARTS**

The Aurors are guarding Azkaban now because the Dementors have massed around Hogwarts because they need to catch Black to make themselves whole because until he’s dead they will be driven mad, because the hate and fear they live off is turning against them now, because no one is allowed to escape them, because things fall apart and the centre will not hold.

‘Rejoicing’, Dumbledore says looking out from his bedroom window with a cold G&T in one hand and Fawkes on his shoulder, ‘shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance’.

‘What in Merlin’s name made you think of that?’ Fawkes asks.

‘The Dementors have a prison full of souls to torment, but having one man escape is more than they can bear. It’s curious’ Dumbledore says.

‘It’s obvious’ Fawkes says ‘Plain as a pikestaff. He’s innocent. They like them innocent.’

‘He can't be’ Dumbledore says.

‘Please yourself’ Fawkes says ‘but get rid of those freaks, they’re upsetting the centaurs’.

**REMUS**

Remus’ conscience is a pliable thing. He’s lied every day since he was five. Lied to survive, lied to get work, lied for the fun of it.

So when Snape (or Dumbledore, infinitely more subtly) come probing for his memories of Sirius, for clues, for something, he can wall them off as easy as breathing. 

Dumbledore gets the bland stuff - a safe feed of teenage memories. Remus plays with Snape and it's cruel, he knows that, but see above re: conscience. Snape gets Remus’ memories of Sirius happy and beautiful and whole, of flirtations, of glances held too long and of summer evening conversations that Snape was never invited to join.

**SIRIUS**

Padfoot literally stumbles on the bothy. Trips over the bootscraper and falls flat on his broken leg. He howls in anger and pain, then looks up and sees the door. It’s not locked. He noses up the latch, pushes the door open, gets out of the rain. Inside there are blankets folded neatly on the one chair, cupboards full of food, dry wood for kindling in the fireplace, books up high on a shelf. 

**HOGWARTS**

Fawkes flies off again and Dumbledore watches him go and then makes his mind up. Pointy hat, lemon drops, kind face, but he’s a general, this is the war to end all wars (much like the last one) and Fudge has made mistakes he won't want known. 

The next morning the Dementors drag themselves back to Azkaban, and there are Aurors guarding Hogwarts.

**REMUS**

Remus is still in the habit of making maps. Most stay in his head. Some (map of werewolf bites, map of stabbings) he draws in the hope, never realised, that once they are on paper there will be a pattern and he will be able to see it. This latest map he hates, but it makes itself unbidden in his mind.

‘This is where I kissed him first, that is where he kissed me last, that’s the cupboard where we, that’s the cupboard where we would have but Lily found us, that’s where he told me and then I told him, that’s where I promised, that’s where he lied, that’s where he lied. That’s where he lied. Every window and fireplace, every caved in tunnel and every classroom, every time he acted like he loved me, that’s where he lied. Soon I’ll wake up and hear a dog has ripped Harry’s throat out and it will all have been my fault.’

**SIRIUS**

When the exhaustion and the shock have worn out the pain stays and wakes Padfoot up. He needs to fix his leg, and he can’t do that as a dog. He needs to eat, and there’s no food fit for dogs in the bothy. He has no choice but to become human.

Sirius Black in his Azkaban rags opens his eyes. For a moment he sees the summer sky and he’s glad to be alive. Then it starts.

He’d thrown his memories of Remus into the rough waters thirteen years ago, to keep Remus safe, to do something/anything with the rage and despair that overwhelmed him, to spite the Dementors.

So now they’re coming back intact, a flood of them that knocks him out. First it’s the fights, the suspicion, the silences - those he can deal with. It’s the good stuff that nearly breaks him - Remus’s face lighting up when there’s new mischief to plan, Remus racing James down to the lake, Remus looking up at him and smiling, the thousand chances he wasted, the days he could have been happy but wasn’t, the days he was happy and still he couldn’t see what was right in front of him.

He can’t give in and so he doesn’t. There are sparks of magic gathering in his fingertips, muscle memory working again. He makes a fire from nothing, makes a bed from the blankets. The first healing spell he tries leaves scorch marks on the floor, the second works. Badly, slowly, but it works.

That night he dreams of four friends in a castle and of falling in love and wakes as if from a nightmare.

**HOGWARTS**

Hogwarts does comfortable well. The professors give up their lives to teach there - those who have families see them rarely, those who have friends outside keep the friendships alive on paper. In exchange, well, one of the things they get in exchange is comfort. Their rooms suit their characters: McGonagall has architectural blueprints on the walls, Flitwick damask floral curtains and plant pots everywhere, Snape a cursed Caravaggio over the fireplace (the soot makes it darker - he likes that). The house-elves keep everything clean, every cushion plumped, every specimen jar polished, every scroll rolled up and tied up with ironed ribbons.

Muggles say school looks smaller when you go back. Hogwarts doesn't. It adjusts for everyone.

**REMUS**

Remus does not let the house elves in.  Clanger made it in by whispering Parseltongue at his door (the lock’s shaped like a snake - a relic of the great lock-swapping prank of 1974) but Remus threw him out mid-tidy. He sends his entire salary to Gringotts - he has worked out that he will be able to live outside for five years off every year’s salary and in the meantime he’s housed and fed and there are books. Daydreaming is free, so Remus does that, imagining futures where Sirius is innocent and they get back together and skip off into the fucking sunset.

‘Stop it stop it stop it you idiot. Don't give into hope because you can't come back from that.’

**SIRIUS**

The thing about the body is that it wins. Hunger will make you eat, tiredness will make you sleep. 

So Sirius eats the food in the cupboards - Chocolate, eccles cakes, Tunnock's caramel wafers, cans of Irn Bru, one and a half bottles of Talisker, coffee and dried milk.  

Ragged, bruised, drunk and on one hell of a sugar high he thinks that finding the bothy was luck, like the Minister bringing that particular issue of the Prophet had been luck and the luck might hold. 

‘There’ll be fireworks and stars and it’ll all come good in the end.’

**WHITEHALL**

Every day the Daily Prophet asks why Black hasn't been caught yet. Every day the Daily Mail blames the Muggle Prime Minister for it and the poor bastard wants so badly to tell them the truth and then tell them to go fuck themselves, but what can he do? No one will believe him. 

He wishes he’d never become Prime Minister. He opens another red box and whispers ‘I am unfit for this place and never should have come here’.

**REMUS**

Remus gets through the day on Professor Pinkerton’s Pink Pick Me Up Pills (banned in five countries so you know they’re good) and adrenalin. He twitches at every flicker of the light, but then so does everyone else, a castle full of people waiting to see Black jump out with a knife. 

He takes refuge in happy memories, but he doesn’t have many of those without Sirius (in Quidditch kit, out of Quidditch kit, asleep in Potion’s class, charming McGonagall, charming the ghosts, charming the damn owls).

‘I could cope’, Remus thinks, ‘I did cope when I’d thought you’d forgotten me.’

Remus had come to an accommodation on those terms with his thoughts. It was not, he knew, precisely healthy, but then he was a borderline alcoholic werewolf with a sideline addiction to Professor Pinkerton’s pills, and healthy wasn’t on the cards.

Not quite suicidal, not running naked through the streets screaming, not in Azkaban, those were achievable goals. Healthy he’d given up on a while ago. 

‘Hey, out of the four of us, I’m winning right? Five of us. I’m sorry Lily, but I’m the one left alive.’

Now even that consolation had been taken from him too. Sirius could still do the crossword, could still hold a conversation. Whatever passed for his soul was still there.

**SIRIUS**

A hundred miles away Sirius wakes up for the first time in years with two legs, prehensile thumbs and properly human-frightened. This isn't he bleak dread of the Dementors, that rattling filthy terror that filled Azkaban and it isn't one of Padfoot’s plain fears: hunger, thirst, loneliness.

This is a peculiarly human horror - fear mixed with hope, the knowledge that he has one chance, that if he fails he would have let down everyone and everything he loved again. Behind that the fear that Harry can do without a broken half-mad godfather, that Remus will not want him. Behind that, too, another selfish fear - being caught and not dying.

‘They’ll make an example of me. Walk this way, see the man who should have died.’

**HOGWARTS**  

Hermione lives in the library even more so than normal, looking for reasons as to why Black turned out as he did. She tells Ron and Harry (no one else asks) that she’s looking for ways to stop him and she has to do something. It’s not quite the truth. Black was the best student in his year. She’s the best student in her year. They have something in common and she does not like that. Hogwarts rearranges the books so as to put Marigold Mackenzie’s _Mistrials and Mishaps_ under her nose. When the library closes Hermione is halfway through, so she hides it under her cloak and runs to Gryffindor tower.

**REMUS**

‘I should have known’, Remus thinks, ‘he didn’t love me despite he loved me because, because I was the closest thing to a monster he could fuck. And now he’s coming here. I should ask him for a date.’  

Remus starts laughing all by himself in the corridor on the way to class. Fred and George look at him and then at each other and wonder if this teacher might be on their side.

**SIRIUS**

Sirius’s magic has come back stronger than ever, as though Azkaban had burnt out the non-magical parts of his soul - but he can't control it yet. 

He melts a pan, turns the blankets into living sheep and back again, builds a dovecote out of a pine cone. He laughs at himself but it isn't entirely funny - if he can't do the easy stuff how will he pull off the near-impossible? He sits down and studies the bothy’s book of Scottish walks. Right, then left, then left again and he’ll reach the place where maps end and Threstrals wait for next year’s students.

His mind’s had time to reorder itself now. It’s a mess, it’ll be a mess for a long while yet, but it’s a more or less working mess. He can start to plan, to figure what he’ll need to steal, who he’ll need to trick, what lies he’ll need to tell. 

Sirius has talent at being a functioning trainwreck. Blacks have written novels - good ones - on five martinis before breakfast and ruined cities on six.

**HOGWARTS**

Mrs. Norris tries to make friends with Crookshanks, sidling up and purring. He hisses and runs away. She follows, but he’s too quick for her and already knows the castle too well.

**REMUS**

Cats are scared of Remus. He’s kind to them. He is always kind, he has to be kind to prove to himself he’s not a monster, but they are still scared of him. Crookshanks isn’t, and that throws him for a while. Then one night the cat trots alongside him (not behind, alongside) miaowing as if to say something and sighing when he doesn’t understand. Remus can't help feeling like he’s the dumb animal here.

**SIRIUS**

Sirius is back in dog form, but with human cunning he wheedles a lift from two teenagers heading for Thurso in a beat up car. The girl watches the news on her phone and when he sees his human self Padfoot can’t help whining. The girl strokes his head, says there there and feeds him the boy’s lunch.

**HOGWARTS**

Draco holds court in the Slytherin common room.

‘He’s dead. He’s got to be dead. Drowned as soon as he left Azkaban, I bet. He’d better wash up somewhere soon or summer will be completely ruined.’

**REMUS**

NEWT class today, on the safe capture of part-humans.

‘The flutter-wing excalibug’ Remus hears himself say ‘follows the Banshee and feeds off her screams. If you see one - you can recognise it by the double helix pattern on their wings -  what spell might help?’

The class look at him, stupidly.

‘They’re not stupid’, Remus reminds himself. ‘They’re scared and underslept and waiting for your ex-lover to jump through the window. They’re doing their best, now you do yours.’

‘ _Unmagic’_ , Remus says in his best teacher voice.

Draco flicks back his fringe and drawls: ‘That’s not a spell. It’s just a made up word.’

‘Trust a Malfoy to miss the point’ Remus thinks.

‘It’s a Pictish spell’ Remus says, ’Translated into English because there aren't any Picts left. They had’ - Remus pauses for the right word – ‘interesting spells. Spells that take away memories and bottle them, spells that stop magic from happening, spells for pickling fish. Don’t laugh, you’ve never tried Pictish herring. _Unmagic_ stops non-human magic.  Banshees can't scream, Mermaids can't sing.’

‘That’s it?’ Pansy asks.

‘Yes Pansy, that’s it’, Remus says, ‘It’s a tricky spell and an unstable one.’

‘Does this work on Animagi?’ Hermione asks, ‘there's no reference in any of the literature, not even in Frobberthrill & Malevento’.

Remus had kept that off the reading list. He should have moved it to the restricted section. 

‘I should replace half the books in the damn library, he thinks. ‘I’d have to write them of course. _Werewolves, your snuffly friends’. ‘How to pat a werewolf and keep all your limbs’ ‘Wolfsbane recipes for the domestic lycanthrope’_.

‘Professor Lupin’, Hermione says again.

‘Yes’, Remus says ‘I think it would’.

Another hand up. Harry, this time.

‘Why not just kill them?’ Harry asks ‘they’re dangerous. We should just kill them.’

‘It’s complicated’ Remus hears himself say.

**HOGWARTS**

That afternoon Hermione is alone in the library when she hears a flutter of wings. She looks up and it’s not an owl, it’s Fawkes. He lets fall a roll of papers tied together with red and gold ribbon and flies off.

Hermione unties the ribbon and finds the letters Sirius wrote to Remus in the summer after the Prank. She reads it looking for proof that Sirius was different to her, and learns instead that he loved his friends and was in love with Remus, that he’s arrogant, reckless, thoughtless, kind, heartbroken, remorseful.

She looks at Fawkes.

‘I don't believe he did it’ Hermione says.

‘Goodness’ Fawkes says ‘you just might not be a complete fool. Are you sure you’re all human?’

‘My parents are dentists’ Hermione says.

‘That’s what they told you’ Fawkes says, and flies off.

**REMUS**

Every teacher, three ghosts and Hagrid crowd into Dumbledore's office watching and waiting until, with a self-important ker-plunk, the Minister hops out of the fireplace.

‘We have a number of promising leads, very promising indeed’ the Minister says.

‘You haven't caught him’ Snape says.

‘Not exactly, no’ the Minister says. ‘Still, we are where we are and we should congratulate ourselves that if we have not achieved our ultimate objective undoubtedly regrettable though that is, it is also true, likewise that on the other hand neither has Black.’

Fawkes lifts his head disgustedly and says ‘He hasn't killed the boy yet. Do you want a prize for that?’

The Minister recovers, draws himself up and starts again as sternly as he can manage: ‘It is of the utmost importance that we focus relentlessly on the task at hand’.

‘Oh quite’ Dumbledore murmurs.

‘I only wish I could help’, Snape drawls, ‘We were hardly close. You were his friend weren’t you Remus?’’

‘I thought I was’ Remus says. 

**SIRIUS**

When the teenagers reach the turning off for Hogwarts they fall asleep. The car stops by itself, lets Sirius out (magical creature recognition sub-routine, administered by the Ministry) and drives away.

Padfoot makes plans, one madder than the next: circle the castle with mouse-traps and rat poison, throw himself on Dumbledore's mercy, talk to Remus.

**THE BURROW**

The Weasleys’ clock has Ron ‘threatened by someone you trust’. Arthur mutters something about catching Black. Molly asks ‘Why would Ron trust Black?’

**REMUS**

He isn’t scared of Sirius killing him. He really isn’t and that probably isn’t a good sign, but there you are, what do you expect a tired werewolf to do. No, what frightens him, what keeps him walking the corridors is the thought that he might be the one to catch Sirius. He can’t hand Sirius over. He’s run that through his mind a few times and he just can’t. Even in his own mind he can’t hand Sirius over to have his soul sucked out. So that’s that. He can’t let Sirius go either. So that’s that. There’s only one option left and Remus, walking the corridors and the stairs and standing for hours under the shower comes finally to accept it. He has to be ready to kill Sirius if and when the moment comes.

**SIRIUS**

Five days later, last day of term, and as the sun sets Crookshanks and the big black dog sit side by side, looking up at Hogwarts.

**HOGWARTS**

Midnight that same night. Ron’s legs stick out from under the bed as he wriggled to get hold of Scabbers. 

‘You. Here. Now. Ow. No biting’ Ron says.

Scabbers digs his claws into the carpet and clings on.

‘Have it your way’ Ron says and clambers out from under the bed.

‘Come on Ron’ Harry calls.

‘Coming’ Ron says, ‘Wouldn't want to be late, would I?’

‘I love astronomy night’ Hermione says.

‘Star-gazing night’ Ron says.

‘Same thing innit’ Harry says.

‘No!’ Ron and Hermione say together.

‘It’s sit out in the cold on the top of the Astronomy tower while a mad murderer chases us night’ Ron says ‘that’s what it is’.

‘Cheer up’ Harry says ‘he’s not after you’.

Left alone Scabbers burrows deeper into the blankets and dreams of cheese. Toasted, mostly.

**REMUS**

Remus leads the third year up the Astronomy Tower from the front, with Hagrid at the end of the long single file. On normal years astronomy night is a giant sleepover and the third years learn more gossip than they do about stars. This year they file up quietly and stay close together, as if Black was going to apparate in front of them, knife between his teeth and murder in his eyes. 

Crookshanks counts them all out.

**REMUS and SIRIUS**

Padfoot stays beside the lake, ready to swim down and take his chances with the giant until Crookshanks comes back and reports that they were right: The rat had always felt safer indoors and he’ll be alone indoors now.

Padfoot looked up, prays to the dog-saint Gelert  and races to the castle, Crookshanks hurrying behind him. Remus has counted the last student up when he sees the familiar shape, a horror-thing where his memories had a silly, happy dog.

He thinks dully that any evil done in the castle tonight will be his own fault for being loyal to the memory of a liar and a traitor. He shouts up to Hagrid to take the class and runs back down the staircase, jolting and pushing students as he goes.

Hagrid could cry, but half-giants look even more stupid when they cry, so instead he trudges up the tower and faces the teenagers. 

Padfoot, cat and werewolf chase-follow each other through the fat lady’s portrait, the Gryffindor common room and up the stairs. 

Remus opens the last door and sees a scarecrow. A mass of filthy, matted hair hung to his elbows. If his eyes hadn't been shining out of the deep, dark sockets, he might have been a corpse. The waxy skin was stretched so tightly over the bones of his face, it looked like a skull. His yellow teeth were bared in a grin, and he’s holding a rat suspended in mid air, writhing, twisting and quite unable to fall or climb.

Remus has the knife in his hand, but he can’t use it. He goes looking in his head for something else he can do (it’s seconds, but it feels like hours) and the best he can think of is casting Unmagic

The spell works. Sirius can’t change now - later, he will say that he felt Padfoot leave him. It does more than work. It’s an unstable spell, cast by an unstable werewolf. It sucks the magic out of the room. The fireplace closes up, the candles turn off, the pictures go blank, the furniture shrinks and hardens, and as the rat falls through the air. Remus has time to think that this is what it must feel like to find out at eleven that you are a squib, and that the rat has very distinctive markings and is missing one of its fingers and the rat has hit the floor now and is turning to get on its feet and now Remus knows why Sirius laughed when he was arrested because right now that’s all he wants to do. Instead he catches the rat, werewolf reflexes coming in useful.

‘Run’ Sirius says. ‘Take the rat and run’.

‘I’m your friend’ Remus says. ‘I wasn't for a long time, but I am now. Do what I tell you and we might make it’.

The idea comes to him fully-formed. It’s the stuff of a crime caper, but Remus knows how the whole shy away from half-creatures, broken creatures. He’s seen the students flinch at the monsters he brings into class, remembers how even McGonagall can’t always meet his eyes, how for months after finding out Peter had avoided being alone with him.  So. Turn it against them and it might work. 

Remus tears down the red velvet curtains (like an old-fashioned theatre, but then Gryffindors do live as though they’re on stage and playing the lead) and makes a cloak with a hood for Sirius. The soft, glossy fabric looks obscene/absurd against his Azkaban rags and ragged hands, but it’s good, that’s what he’s going for. Remus takes Sirius by the hand, shoves Peter into a pocket, and starts off through the castle.

Crookshanks goes ahead. Remus isn't consciously following the cat at first - he’s walking back to his own rooms and no he hasn't got a fucking plan for after that. Then Remus turns right but Sirius - shaking, skeleton-thin Sirius - stands still, looking at the cat as Filch comes into sight.

‘This is it’, Remus thinks, ‘caught by Filch at the end.’

Pad pad pad comes Filch down the corridor. Pitter patter pitter patter goes Mrs. Norris and mrrrawr goes Crookshanks hurtling towards her, making her turn and run and giving Remus some courage back.

‘Mr. Filch’ Remus says,’ You are in danger of disturbing a most sensitive specimen. Do you have any idea of the complexity of bringing home a …’ Remus’ voice dries up. 

‘A what?’ Filch asks. ‘A what precisely would it be you are walking through the castle when there’s a curfew on?’

A thin, high croak.

It’s Sirius.

‘Half-dead and you’re still a ham’ Remus thinks. ‘Still jumping center stage and chewing any scenery going.’

Sirius stretches out one skeletal arm and says ‘Vampiiire. From Darkest Peru’.

Filch darts away, crossing himself.

Crookshanks leads them to McGonagall’s office and what can Remus do but knock?

Inside Sirius lowers his hood and has no strength to talk, barely enough strength left to stand.

MacGonagall looks at him, and then rounds on Remus: ‘And what did you think you were doing leaving Hagrid alone like that?’

‘Hagrid’ she says ‘has no knowledge of astronomy. That would not matter if Hagrid had any confidence in himself as a teacher, but he does not. What you did was unfair and unkind. I expected more of you.’ She turns to Sirius: ‘Now. You’ll be in need of a shower.’

Sirius stammers something. Afterwards, neither of them will remember what he’d said or tried to say, but they both remembered that McGonagall had cut across them both and insisted on Sirius washing. Remus follows him into the bathroom, feeling that would be less excruciatingly awkward than waiting outside and also fearing - rightly as it turned out - that Sirius might have forgotten how to turn on a shower, how to use soap, to know that his hair was too matted to be saved and needed cutting.

McGonagall waits until Sirius is dressed in clean, dry robes and has drunk three cups of tea with three sugars in each. 

Then she asks: ‘Can you talk?’

‘Yes’ Sirius says.

‘That’s remarkable enough for the story to be worth telling’ she says ‘so tell it’.

Haltingly at first and then more and more fluently,  looking to Remus for help/confirmation, Sirius talks and she listens. At the end she claps, twirls her left hand, and Pettigrew appears safe and mute inside a milky cage

‘Remus’ McGonagall says ‘I cannot see Sirius coping by himself or for that matter either of you coping without the other’.

Pettigrew winces at that, but no one notices.

‘Go home’ she says to Remus.’ Lie low. Albus and I will talk and when we have a way out we will tell you.’

**DIAGON ALLEY**

Trade is bad. No one is having their wand repaired, or buying owls or trying on robes, so the only people in the Leaky Cauldron are Diagon Alley traders

They talk about Sirius Black and how strange it was that he had turned out to be the traitor, and how it went to show that you just could not tell. Olivander listens quietly, nursing his sarsaparilla, until Florian Fortescue asks for his opinion.

‘Mine? Olivander says. ‘What do I know of anything but wands? Black’s was cypress and unicorn hair. Cypress wand owners will lay down their life for their friends, unicorn hair can't be turned to the dark arts and yet, and yet. Pettigrew's was redwood and dragon string and the owners of redwood wands always fall on their feet, make the right choice, snatch advantage from catastrophe. But Pettigrew's dead and Black killed him.’

**REMUS AND SIRIUS**

It’s past mid-morning when they wake up in Remus’ house by the blue lake on Cadair Idris.

It had been a chapel and before that Roman soldiers had dug a temple of Mithras there and before that Caractacus’ last soldiers had fought off the Romans there and before that Hogwarts only knows. It has always been a place of refuge.

He Apparates there with his arms around Sirius and the poor kid ‘he’s not a kid, he’s thirty-five and has spent twelve years in hell’  falls asleep in seconds. 

Remus makes himself a cup of tea, drinks it, and falls asleep next to Sirius.

It’s past mid morning when they wake up, Sirius with his head on Remus’ heart and his arm around Remus’ waist. They carry on acting as if everything is fine, as if Sirius hadn't forgotten his whole seventeenth year and Remus hadn't spent his twenty-third writing awful poetry (he spent his twenty-fourth reading good poetry, it may have hurt more) as if Sirius isn't cold all the time.

It means avoiding anything awkward but they’ve had enough practice at that.

They lie there quietly, the silence of everything that needs to be said stretching around them until Sirius looks at Remus and asks if there are any eggs. For the rest of the day they talk about breakfast, dogs, the sky, the colour of the lake, Crookshanks’ various miaows, anything, anything, anything but the mess that has been made of their lives and the dangers around them.

The next day’s the same, and the next. They’re happy. Sirius gets stronger every day and his beauty comes back fast - too fast, Remus thinks, ‘people will think you’re fine inside and you're not’. 

Remus makes his twelve years in the wilderness into a comedy. He tells Sirius about the lousy flats, the one night stands (more women than men because he always ended up comparing the men to Sirius and they always came up short), the years of changing city every few months. He feels he’s won every time he makes Sirius laugh. Sirius talks about everything but Azkaban.  They cook together, and fuck, and lie out on the grass. Remus finishes the boat he’s been building for years, Sirius practices wandless magic - conjuring up rainbows, transfiguring the blankets into giant bats, flashing fireworks over the lake and up up into the sky until they look like stars.

‘How many people have you fucked?’ Sirius asks one night.

‘Is that jealous asking or curious asking?’ Remus asks.

‘Both. No, neither. I don't know’ Sirius says. ‘Just curious.’

‘It’s never just curious’ Remus says.

Sirius hmmms at that, but doesn't know how to explain himself. If he’d tried he might have said that a long time ago he’d assumed he’d have mistresses (it’s the done thing in his family) and then he’d assumed he’d shag the better looking half of gay London and then after the Prank he’d realised that none of that was worth anything if he couldn't be with Remus.

Since Azkaban all those unlived lives, versions of his twenties not spent screaming at a blank wall, have come crowding in and he wonders where they might have taken him and whether they would/could have taken them to anyplace better than where he is now, with Remus stroking his hair and the linnets singing outside.

The outside world leaves them alone, mostly. Remus gets an owl inviting him to return to Hogwarts when the summer holidays are over. McGonagall visits twice and is uncharacteristically vague. Remus thinks she looks shifty. Sirius doesn't, but Sirius is finding it hard to remember how to watch anyone but Remus. Madame Pomfrey sends medicines and instructions as to how to take them. Snape sends Wolfsbane and snippy notes. Remus hides the notes, Sirius scowls anyway and sets to learning how to make the potion.

The full moon comes. Moony dozes, his nose buried in Padfoot’s fur.

They are happy. On the afternoon of the last day of August they row out to the middle of the lake. Sirius is telling stories about freshwater merpeople (and the Blacks who hunted them to extinction) when Dumbledore Apparates into the boat. 

‘Peter won’t confess’ Dumbledore says. ‘We can’t get a pardon without his confession. I’m afraid...’

Sirius interrupts him. ‘I’ll have to carry on being dead. Tell Harry I drowned off the rocks around Azkaban’.

Dumbledore nods, and leaves.

Sirius looks around at the lake, and the sky, and their house on the edge of it all, and smiles at Remus.

‘It’s a better prison’ he says.

Remus smiles back and takes Sirius’ hands in his. He thinks, but does not say, that it won't last, that Dumbledore will be back soon asking for more. 

‘He’ll move you into Grimmauld place, he’ll send me out after the werewolves again. Remus Lupin, high ambassador to the undead, the lycanthropic and the bitey. If I were the only girl in the world, and you were the only boy. If this was were the only house in the world this might work, but we aren’t and it isn't and it won't.’

‘Come on’ Sirius says ‘it’s starting to rain.’

**REMUS**

Remus goes back to teach at Hogwarts. Sirius reads the Mabinogion three and a half times and counts down the seconds until the weekends.

During the week Remus has to stay at Hogwarts. He keeps sane by keeping busy. His lessons get ever more inventive until they are almost manic. He’s up late every weekday night planning for the next morning’s classes. Then one day Harry produces a brilliant Patronus, and tells Remus that he hasn't used a memory, exactly.

‘I thought about Black drowning’ Harry says.

That night Remus goes down to Hogsmeade to get himself slaughtered on Old Ogden’s. He doesn't plan to pick someone up, but he’s always been good at it. It’s about the only side of himself that he hasn’t over analysed and that’s a shame, because the truth is that men and women (plus the occasional mermaid/vampire/veela) like going to bed with him because he’s kind, and respectful, and interested in other people’s lives. Plus he’s a good lay, though who knows whether that’s cause or effect.

So when a woman sits next to him at the bar in the Three Broomsticks and asks him his name he knows right away how this is going to go if he doesn't leave, and he doesn't leave. Next time he sees her she’s changed her eye colour and the shape of her nose and she’s delighted that he still recognises her. They end up in bed together a few more times, and then she leaves for London. It’s only as they’re saying goodbye that he realises that the way she moves reminds him of Sirius.

**SIRIUS**

Sirius maps the mountain, tracing every tree, every bird, every hiding place. It will have to be enough. He has time if not space and a mind that’s not being rotted by Dementors. He’ll learn more magic, learn Welsh, learn Welsh magic. He’ll cook and write and salvage a life from this. He’ll be patient.

Sirius always has good intentions.

**TONKS**

Tonks turns 22 in London where she’s supposed to be researching a book about Tognina Gonsalvus, werewolf-chatelaine of Chamont-Blois castle. Instead she’s arguing with Fleur Delacour.

‘It is your birthday. On your birthday, you celebrate. You do not hide in the attic’ Fleur says. ‘You also do not make the heartbroken face.’

‘Can't. Too miserable’ Tonks says.  She is trying very hard not to look at Fleur because honestly the way that girl looks is not fair.

‘Absurd’ Fleur says. ‘You are coming outside with me now.’

‘I am heartbroken’ Tonks says. She sniffs bravely.

Fleur tells her to stop with the melodrama. Tonks says that Fleur is too young to understand. Fleur reminds Tonks that they’ve only got two years between them. Tonks glares and says it’s more like two and a half. Fleur tells Tonks to kiss her. Tonks blinks a few times and does nothing. Fleur explains that if she is really in love with this Lupin person then the kiss will mean nothing. Tonks nods. Fleur kisses her and Tonks feels that, after all, life might be worth living even if she never sees Remus Lupin again.

**REMUS AND SIRIUS**

Remus, not young, not whole, not rich, but not entirely broken Apparates home with a satchel-full of books. Sirius has asked him for histories, mostly of Azkaban and the Dementors. Remus figures he’s trying to process things, but soon it starts looking more like a research project. Sirius starts asking for more and more recondite books. 

‘What the fuck’ Remus wonders, does he want Abelard and Heloise's map of the river Lethe?  ‘Why Mugwump the Unreliable’s _Chronicles of the Wells of Lost Memories_? Or _What the Eumenides did next_?’

Eventually, he gets together the courage to ask Sirius.

‘I want to destroy Azkaban’ Sirius answers, and Remus thinks he’s evading the question.

**HOGWARTS**

Hermione forgets to hand in her History of Magic homework. She’s late to Potions. She copies her homework from Ron. She’s given detention four times, each time for reading restricted books. She snaps at Crookshanks, who looks guilty. In the end Ron and Harry corner her in the library and ask her what’s wrong.

‘Everything’ she says. ‘It doesn't make sense. Why did Pettigrew’s body disappear, but they found the twelve Muggle bodies? I know, I know, Pettigrew was the centre of the blast, but then why did his little finger survive? What spell was it anyway? There isn’t a spell that just dissolves people. Really. There just isn’t.  I’ve looked. Why did Black go after Pettigrew anyway? He could have gone to ground, disappeared. It doesn't make sense. He’s supposed to have drowned now, but they’ve never found the body. It doesn't make sense.’

Crookshanks miaows.

‘Black was mental’ Ron says. ‘Stark raving bonkers.’

**REMUS AND SIRIUS**

Remus tells Sirius about Tonks. He says he’ll move out and leave the house to Sirius. He says he’s sorry for betraying Sirius. He says he doesn't know why he did it. It takes Sirius less than a minute to work out that Tonks must be Nymphadora. He spends the rest of the weekend teasing Remus about his taste in Black black sheep. Late on Sunday night Remus asks him why he’s not angry. 

‘I can't waste anger on this’ Sirius says.

**HOGWARTS**

Dumbledore looks weary. ‘There’s no use’, he says.  ‘We’ve done what we can for him’.

‘We’ve done nothing for him Albus’ McGonagall says.

‘We’ve kept him alive’, Dumbledore says.

‘He’s innocent’, McGonagall says.

‘The Muggles don't know that, and there are a thousand of them for each one of us’, Dumbledore says.

‘We tell them he’s innocent’, McGonagall says.

‘We tell them he turned into a dog and was betrayed by a rat?’ Dumbledore says.

‘We do something’, McGonagall shouts. ‘We can’t build a better world on betraying our friends.’

**REMUS and SIRIUS**

When Remus gets home he finds Sirius at the kitchen table, cut up newspapers scattered all over it.

‘How did you get these?’ Remus asks.

‘I stole them’, Sirius says. ‘I missed doing the crossword.'

‘They could have recognised you’ Remus says. ‘They could have impounded you.’

‘Locked me up, cut off my dick and put me up for adoption’ Sirius says. ‘Well. There’s worse in here.’

He stands up and Remus sees the table covered in photographs of Sirius’ screaming face, the faces of the people they believe he’s killed, headlines saying that the monster’s still on the loose, that he should rot in hell, that our children will not be safe until he’s dead, that hanging is too good for him.

‘You didn't tell me about this’ Sirius says.

‘No’ Remus says.

Wizards can only hide among Muggles because Muggles aren’t looking for them. Even that’s hard - oh the spellwork and the contrivances, the hidden doorways, the obliviations, the foul-tasting unreliable Polyjuice. This is different, though. The Muggles are looking for Sirius.

Remus doesn't know what to say, so he’s glad when Sirius seems to change the subject and starts talking, haltingly, brokenly about Azkaban.

It’s not the horrors that Sirius wants to talk about (he can’t talk about those and won’t be able to for a long time). It’s the practical arrangements, the way the place is run. Sirius tries to explain that Azkaban doesn’t work, that it’ll crack open the second Voldemort asks it to.

‘Dementors don’t feed on memories, but on pain. They feed on the link between the memories and the person. It’s the tearing out that does it for them, the wrenching out of the memory and the paring down of the soul.’

Remus doesn’t know why he’s changed the subject, but he’s glad of it, so he lets it be. Sirius takes Remus’ silence and reads it as anger. So it goes.

**TONKS**

Fleur meets Tonks’ parents for the first time. They love her, of course they do, and they adore her when they find out she can bake.Andromeda has never trusted anyone who can't cook; when Sirius got his first flat she sent over 72 bottles of wine, a suitcase full of spices and Larousse Gastronomique.

Fleur makes opera cake and Tonks doesn't eat any.

‘Something wrong’ Ted asks?

‘No’ Tonks says, ‘it’s just that everything tastes weird right now. Like it’s been seasoned with metal.’

‘Oh honey’ Andromeda say. ‘Whatever you decide we’re here for you’.

Abortion’s legal in the Wizarding World. French plaits and cricket aren’t (long story) but abortion has been safe, legal and rare since Merlin.

Tonks goes to the clinic the next day. On the way there keeps on going through the logical, sensible, reasons why she she’s doing this. She’s not in love with the father any more, he was never in love with her, she wants to go on adventures with Fleur. It is obviously the right thing to do. She stops, suddenly. She’s never done the right thing in her life and by Merlin why should she start now? She turns back, heads to the Leaky Cauldron for three six packs of butterbeer (safe in pregnancy - honestly, how do Muggle women cope?) and to Florian Fortescue’s for four chocolate ice cream sundaes and then goes home.

She opens the door expecting a fight, ready to explain that she doesn’t owe anyone a damn explanation and by Merlin this is her choice.

Thirty-five seconds later Fleur is saying that they ought to call the child Teddy because ‘Andromeda darling, I love you but English pure bloods have terrible taste in names’, Ted is saying that he hopes the kid will be a metamorphmagus, and Andromeda has invented the butterbeer and chocolate ice cream sundae.

**REMUS**

Luna sticks her hand up in class. ‘What happens if a vampire and a human have a baby? Or a human and a werewolf?’

An awkward giggle crosses the class.

Remus thanks the Gods of queerness and says that no one knows, but it probably isn't a good idea. He thinks suddenly of Sirius playing with baby Harry, and that Sirius might have been a good dad if, well, if absolutely everything including large parts of Sirius’ character had been different.

**SIRIUS**

Sirius is cooking when Fleur arrives. He says it's practice for making potions, but the truth is he likes it, the measuring out and the planning and the checking.

That, by the way, is what makes his recklessness dangerous. Most people, when they're reckless they total their car or fall flat on their arse. Sirius’ recklessness is epic. It starts land wars in Asia, burns down Rome, persuades James  to make Pettigrew his secret keeper.

First thing Fleur says is ‘I am not here to steal your man’.

By which she means ‘Please don't be distracted by my legs that go on for days and my hair that always falls right and how my skin smells like jasmine and sandalwood. You were almost as beautiful as me, once, and the beauty’s coming back every day that you’re out of Azkaban so please please get where I’m coming from.’

First thing Sirius says is ‘I know’.

By which he means ‘Know I’m innocent, know you’re safe with me, know I’m Remus’, know he’s mine.’

They both smile and decide to like each other. From then on the pattern’s set.

‘She is not going to tell you, so I will. Tonks is having a baby. The father is Remus. It was, how do you say, a fling. He does not love her.  I am in love with her’.

‘And she loves you’, Sirius says. 

‘Naturally’, Fleur says.

There’s a silence.

‘Remus will make this another reason to be guilty', Fleur says.

‘Yes’, Sirius says, ‘he probably will’.

‘You can help’, says Fleur. ‘Make him see that being in love with you and having this child they are not two impossible things to combine.’

‘They shouldn't be’, Sirius says.

‘Exactly’, Fleur says.

‘Stay’, Sirius says, ‘eat’.

**THE BURROW**

The kids are all asleep or at school. Arthur’s back from work at last and it’s just the two of them at the kitchen table in the Burrow and they get to talking about that Easter they’d spent with the Potters and how young Harry had been.

‘I remember Sirius holding Harry,’ Molly says.

‘Don’t’, Arthur says. ‘I get quite enough of Black at work. They’ve no idea so they’re dragging us all in. Is he using a Muggle artefact to hide? Could he have enchanted a tellyfone box?’

‘He was singing something to the baby’, Molly says. ‘A funny tune, I can’t remember it, but it made Harry giggle.’ 

‘Could he be in an aeroplane?’ Arthur says, ‘and how by Merlin am I supposed to know?’

‘He could just have walked out,’ Molly says. ‘That’s what I’ve never understood. Sirius could just have walked out and smashed Harry’s head against a wall.’

‘Molly’, Arthur says, and looks at her.

‘But he didn’t’, Molly says. ‘Why didn’t he?'

**REMUS**

Andromeda invites Remus to dinner. Truth is she doesn't give him much choice. She tells Remus about the baby over the sixth course. He thinks the world has fallen apart. She thinks he's being a melodramatic idiot. They argue about werewolf bloodlines and intra-species mixing until Andromeda snaps that the last time she heard such eugenicist bullshit it was from Walburga.

Remus is ready to be offended, but then Andromeda says that it’s rather funny that Sirius has made the family tree even more complicated and Remus is struck by the ridiculousness of it all.

‘Half-werewolf, half Black’, he says, ‘the world won't know what’s hit it.’

Andromeda pours him another drink, and says ‘You forgot about the metarmorohagus angle - purple werewolf’

‘With sparkly claws’, Remus says. ‘Rainbow werewolf.’

**SIRIUS**

Sirius goes to the lake side when Fleur leaves, lies down on the grass and looks up at the clouds skittering across the Welsh sky. He would like to meet Remus’ son. He would like to cheer Harry on at Quidditch and see the Northern lights with Remus. He would like to be useful. He can’t see how any of these things will happen.

‘What will happen,’ he thinks, ‘is that I’ll move between one or two hideouts until something slips or someone cracks.’

Then it’s a quick miserable end or a slow miserable end and either way I’ll bring Remus down with me. No.

He’s scared even to think about it because it means letting go of this - of the lake and the Welsh sky and of Remus.

‘If fly back towards Azkaban then turn at the last moment…’

He’s not sure what will happen. There’s a chance, he could weaken them. A chance that he could show them up as weaker than they seem. And that would be worthwhile, because he knows for certain that the Dementors will side with Voldemort the first chance they get. 

‘All I can do. Only damn thing I can do. Shake them out, break them down. Keep them away from Moony - give Harry time. I have to. It’s all I can do.’

He gets the same rush of delight that used to come with his most inventive plans. He wonders, idly, if the Hogwarts teachers’ rooms locks are still set to open if anyone talks Parseltongue to them.

It starts raining and he comes to his senses. Still, the idea’s there now and Sirius has always been like a dog with a bone with ideas that he likes.

**HOGWARTS**

Dumbledore keeps Peter in a cell dug deep below the lake. McGonagall had suggested handing him over to the Ministry.

‘As what?’ Dumbledore had asked. 

‘As a criminal’, she had said.

‘I could’, Dumbledore had said, ‘but he’s not a criminal exactly. More an enemy combatant.’

There are no windows to let in the light, no sounds get through the thick stone walls, no rats can gnaw through the enchanted door. Peter’s alone there, alone with his curdled thoughts until he thinks he's gone insane, until he hopes he’s gone insane because then there might be hope of a cure and then Dumbledore or McGonagall comes in and he’s so grateful to see another human that he wants to tell them anything, but his rat cunning keeps him quiet. He’s sure they’ll kill him when he’s got nothing more to tell them. They wouldn't even need to do anything, just shut the door and not come back.

When Remus and Sirius are let into his cell (after they’ve sworn on Merlin’s hat not to hurt or kill him) Peter is taken back to sixth year, the run up to Yule Ball and all anyone is talks about is who is going with whom until it feels as if you haven't got a date there’s something wrong with you.

James pines after Lily and fends off half a dozen girls who were sure they could make him forget that Evans girl if he gave them a chance. Ulysses Pandemonium, the Ravenclaw Seeker, walks right up to him after the game and says that if James ain't never danced with a guy then now’s the time to fix that.

(James runs around the Gryffindor common room after that singing ‘I’m a gay icon, I’m a gay icon’).

Peter watches. 

Peter counts every time a girl sidles up to Sirius and flicks her hair back, every time a guy slips a note into Sirius’ pocket, every time yet another person falls for him. He watches Sirius smile and shake his head and he wonders what the boy is playing at.

Peter rather wishes that Remus hadn't come back so much better looking after the summer holidays, but Remus is the safe friend, the one who will always be worse off than Peter, never work a job above menial no matter how well he does in his NEWTs, never be loved. 

One day Peter says to Remus ‘You’d be fine if it wasn't - if you hadn't been bitten. Take away the...’

‘Furry little problem?’ Remus says.

‘Yeah, that’ Peter says. ‘Take away that and you’d be fighting them off like those two smug gits.’

Peter cheers up after that, and three days later Emmeline Vance asks him to the ball. James goes alone and acts the class clown. Sirius and Remus both skip the ball.

Around 3 am Peter spills pumpkin juice all over his robes and goes back to get changed. It’s a clear night. He sees the moonlight falling across the room and shining on Remus and Sirius asleep in each other’s arms. Peter wants to shout at them, to shout at Remus mostly, but he doesn't. He goes downstairs in his pumpkin-stained robes and picks a fight with Emmeline instead.

James asks him what the hell’s going on. Peter tells him what he’s seen and James stares at him.

‘Didn't you know?’ James says. 

‘Know what?’ Peter says.

‘That Sirius has been in love with Remus since forever. Come on man, you really hadn't noticed?’

‘No’ Peter thinks. ‘I hadn't.’

‘Cheer up’, James says, ‘at least you didn't catch them shagging.’

Peter watches people more carefully after that. He starts looking for ways to hurt people, ways to gain advantages without being caught.

That’s where his mind takes him when he sees Remus and Sirius again. They were supposed to be his friends, but he never mattered as much to them as they mean to each other. Peter hates them, now, more than he has ever thought possible. He wants to hurt them more than he has ever wanted to do anything.

So he does.

He gets it out of them (and they will neither of them remember exactly how) that Tonks is expecting Remus’ child. He says Remus’ luck has turned finally. A child and Sirius back. 

‘What more could you want. It’s a shame that you won't be able to tell the child about Sirius, but then lying to children never does any harm, does it?’

Sirius tries to punch him and the recalling spell whisks them both back to Dumbledore's office, but the damage is done now.

**MINISTRY**

There are rumours everywhere. Black is dead, Black is hiding in the Ministry, Black is leading a zombie army, Black is in Stevenage. The officials try to filter them, to come up with plausible truths, but they’ve nothing to go on so all they do is make up wilder inventions. The lead story, now, is that Black rode a dragon out of Azkaban.

The Minister has asked for a dragon defense risk management plan. Arthur Weasley contributes a section that recommends Nerf guns. ‘I am not’, he tells Molly, ‘letting on about nukes.’

**REMUS AND SIRIUS**

Remus apologises to Dumbledore and whisks Sirius back to Cadair Idris. He wants to talk, there’s a thousand things he should say, there’s stuff they need to work through. They have to sit down and have a proper conversation - nothing held back.

Then Sirius murmurs something and kisses Remus’ neck, Remus starts to come undone and all his good intentions melt in the air.

After, Sirius watches Remus sleeping. It takes a lot to dent Sirius’ confidence in some things. That he’s clever and a good fuck, that he’s good at flying, that he buys good presents and can dance, that he can think his way out of almost anything - these are all things he’s sure about.

Other stuff, though, bigger stuff, there he can be knocked off course by a word. He has never really believed that he’s kind (Blacks aren't, as a rule) or deserves love or does the world much good by being in it.

If he hangs around Remus will have to carry on lying to Harry, have to lie to the child Tonks is carrying. He could disappear, become Padfoot again, but there’d always be the temptation to come back, and anyway if he’s going to go he wants to go out with a bang. He watches Remus sleep and convinces himself again that the best thing he can do is get out of Remus’ life, but if he’s going to disappear he wants it to count. This is the one battle he gets to fight in the second war against Voldemort.

The next day he asks Remus for _Fortresses, the armourer’s guide by C.S. Trebuchet_. Remus figures it’s one way of communicating and gets the books. Sirius figures it's Remus accepting that Sirius needs to do this alone.

**HOGWARTS**

McGonagall rolls her hair up, fixes it with a hairpin and checks her reflection.

‘It won't do’ her mirror says.

McGonagall blinks.

‘The hair’s fine, the cloak’s fine’ her mirror says. ‘You need a new hat, not that you’ll ever listen to me on that, but it won't do. It’s all wrong and you know it. You’ve got no business keeping Sirius trapped. No business at all.’

‘Albus thinks’ McGonagall starts to say.

‘Don't you Albus me’ her mirror says. ‘Albus is too fond of secrets if you ask me. It’s not right, that’s what it is and if you think Sirius will stand for it you’ve got another think coming. He broke out of Azkaban, didn't he?’

McGonagall sighs, and leaves.

‘Don't forget about the hat’ her mirror shouts. ‘They've got some lovely ones in Haberdasher and Aske’s.’

**REMUS**

When Remus gets home his first thought, and he thinks this quite calmly, is that he has lost his mind.

Because Sirius hasn’t just left Cadair Idris, he’s cancelled any trace of his every having been there. Sirius, the damn fool, is trying to protect Remus by hiding the evidence that Remus protected him.

**SIRIUS**

Sirius is tunnel vision straight ahead. It should occur to him that the last time he felt so sure about anything he was asking Pettigrew to be the Secret Keeper, but he doesn't, he’s carried away by the delight of not having doubts.

He turns into Padfoot, walks into Beddgelert, then smuggles himself into a London-bound lorry. He jumps off at West Hampstead and walks into Islington, turns back into Sirius on the doorstep of Grimmauld Place, bows theatrically before his mother’s portrait, heads to the library and settles down cross-legged to read. He makes Kreacher bring him tea and Kreacher makes him the worst tea this side of Azkaban.

**HOGWARTS**

Professor Binns has reacted to all the drama by being even duller than usual. This year he’s teaching the third Goblin rebellion (the one that doesn’t have proper battles) and oh Merlin he’s droning on.

Draco can’t take it anymore. He makes little paper Dementors and enchants them to fly about the room calling out ‘Sirius, Sirius, we’re coming to get you’.

Hermione holds it together until Binns has rounded off the last sub-clause ridden sentence and Draco stands up to take a bow. That does it. She fills her inkwell and empties it over his arrogant blonde head. Draco howls and Crabbe and Goyle drag him away before he can claw at her.

Hermione gets detention and harries McGonagall about Sirius ‘how do you explain’ and ‘yes, but then’ and ‘that’s inconsistent’ and ‘Professor, you’ve always taught us to think logically’ until McGonagall says ‘So what do you think happened, then?’ and all Hermione can say is ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand’.

There’s a silence and Hermione feels like she’s disappearing into it, all her brains and her will no use at all. Then there’s a snapping, cracking sound. Hermione looks down - McGonagall’s knuckles are white and the cracking noise was her wand breaking.

‘I can’t do anything’ McGonagall says. ‘Whatever I do will make things worse. I am sorry.’

**REMUS**

Dumbledore lands in Cadair Idris and asks Remus how Sirius is doing. Remus lies. He’s not sure if he’s lying to protect Sirius or himself. It doesn't work, anyway. Dumbledore does that thing where he tilts his head to the left a fraction and waits for you to correct yourself.

‘He’s gone’, Remus says.

‘Look after yourself’ Dumbledore says. ‘We will need you’.

Then he leaves Remus alone again. Remus realises that if he kept himself alive it was at least in part because he thought Sirius might need him. That Sirius might get pardoned and they would have some sort of life together. That’s gone now.

Remus can't get drunk (sometimes he thinks that if had world enough and time and wasn't in love with a man who disappeared he’d like to do research into why drugs don't work on werewolves. If ever a part human needed a drink …) so he’s sober. The best he can hope for now is a Daily Prophet headline saying Sirius is dead. The worst, he supposes, would be Sirius living with his soul stripped out and the press finding out about the furry little problem. The worst will probably happen.

**SIRIUS**

Every day, every hour in Grimmauld Place wears away at the advances in sanity he’s made, makes the idea of dying in a glorious battle seem sane. The portraits of generations of Blacks, mad, bad and dangerous to know, look down.

He finds confirmation, in the end, in an epic poem written half in Runes and half in Pictish - a settled rule of the Black library is that the more important a book the less the plebs should be able to understand. Sirius thanks Merlin that whatever parts of his soul the Dementors may have taken they’ve left every snobbish skill his parents beat into him, including half a dozen dead languages. It could work, Sirius thinks. It could just work if I time it right.

**MUGGLES**

Children have nightmares about the murderous Sirius Black, there are questions in Parliament about his escape, the headlines call it a national disgrace. There’s not a person in Britain but knows his face.

**REMUS**

Remus makes a list of all the books Sirius asked for and all the things he spoke of (boiling ambergris/Muggle memories/where villains were sent before Azkaban). He draws spiderweb maps all over the walls of Cadair Idris then casts the drawings solid and hangs them from the high ceilings in his Hogwarts’ rooms until he has to duck under strands of writing to get from bed to door and back. There is, he knows, an answer hidden somewhere there, but how by Merlin is he supposed to make sense of Sirius’ thoughts? Even before they were scrambled by Azkaban they jumped and twisted and ended up in unexpected places.

Remus had loved that once, loved it as part of Sirius’ general unexpectedness. Now he rather wishes he’d fallen for a nice reliable chap who did the same thing every Sunday.

**SIRIUS**

Sirius’ plan is so totally uncaring of his safety that Remus, who can imagine Sirius dead but only as a world-crashing stab to the heart will never get there.

The thing is, Sirius is both more and less hopeful than Remus. He’s come out of Azkaban able to do the crossword and quite persuaded that no one could or should love him. He assumes Remus’ is kindness mixed with loneliness and pity, a habit picked up after years, nothing more. He can't imagine that Remus will want him around for long, still less that Remus’ life will be better with him in it. He also knows (and here he’s right) that it is not safe to be near him and that perhaps it’s for the best that Harry thinks he’s dead.

So he’s going to fly back to Azkaban, draw the Dementors out, and then just as they’ve overreached themselves in their desperation to recapture him he’ll fly away. It’s not suicide - he does not want to die and he will try his best not to, but it is a plan that places very little value on his own survival.

Sirius is a brave, clever, and energetic man, and such men are not usually content to sit at home in hiding while they believe others to be in danger.

**HOGWARTS**

Draco keeps a lot of secrets. One of them is that the sorting hat had hesitated before putting him in Slytherin. 

‘I went for Gryffindor with the Black boy and look what that led to. No, it’ll have to be Slytherin.’

If Draco is so performatively, sneerily Pure! Blood!, if he’s almost camp in his villainy it’s because, well, because he’s never secure in his own bad intentions. Under the cruelty kindness is always skulking, trying to break through. When no one is looking he feeds sugar to tired bees, helps lost tourists, un-dog ears library books. He rather envies Crabbe and Goyle, who’ve space inside their thick skulls only for malice and greed.

Feast of St Guillotine and Draco’s called back to Malfoy Manor. Over dinner Lucius tells Narcissa what Kreacher has told him.

Sirius had never felt or shown Kreacher any kindness. Kreacher hated Sirius for that and for betraying the Family (it's always capitalised in Kreacher’s mind). So as Sirius read Kreacher had watched and now Lucius gets to gloat to Narcissa that Sirius was a fool - caught out by that Pettigrew lump -  and has the most preposterous plan to drive the Dementors mad. They talk across Draco and they laugh and he listens.

**REMUS**

Remus teaches a class on the giant, carnivorous spiders of Lower Potamia. He hasn't slept in thirty-nine hours. Halfway through the class he starts hallucinating that he’s teaching the spiders about humans.

‘Do spiders eat werewolves/do werewolves eat spiders?’ he thinks, and almost says.

That night, for the second time in thirty-one years Remus forgets it is a full moon night (the first time was after Halloween 1981). Snape reminds him and slopes round his rooms while Remus drinks the wolfsbane. Remus watches, amused despite everything, until Snape cracks and asks him:

‘Do you know where Black is?’

Remus doesn't even have to lie.

**SIRIUS**

Sirius writes seventeen and a half drafts of a goodbye letter to Remus, and burns them all. Remus will understand, he thinks, and with that thought lets himself off from having to explain.

He steals the Nimbus 2000 from Quality Quidditch Supplies, undoing the anti-theft charms with a flick of his wrist and a muttered incantation. (He can't Apparate without the Ministry knowing, and anyway you can't Apparate within five miles of Azkaban). 

The shop’s owl hoots reprovingly at him and he hoots apologetically back. He flies up, north and west, out over the Atlantic and towards Azkaban.

Olivander watches him go and wonders. He doesn't normally interfere.

**HOGWARTS**

Hogwarts is displeased. She liked Sirius, liked having a Black finally end up in Gryffindor, liked how he’d run his fingers over her walls.

She doesn’t like cowards, and right now that’s what they’re being. Buildings, even Hogwarts, can’t act directly, but there’s a lot they can do. That room you’re always unhappy in? It doesn’t like you. That corridor that you always want to run down? It does.

So Hogwarts puts mirrors in front of McGonagall, and each and every mirror says the same: ‘I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be brave’.

She flips over the stairs to the girls’ dormitory and slides Hermione back down to the common room over and over again until Hermione gives up on going to bed.

She turns off the heating in Ravenclaw until Luna (no other Ravenclaw would be so reckless) wraps herself in a blanket and leaves the tower.

She breaks Ron’s wizarding chess set and loses Neville’s homework.

She makes everyone who doubted Sirius’ guilt talk to each other, unsettles them, and drives them out of their beds. 

McGonagall to Dumbledore’s office (where she’ll find Olivander and Molly Weasley both also driven to tell Dumbledore that something is wrong) the Golden Trio and Draco to Remus's rooms, the other young ones to the Room of Requirement.

**SIRIUS**

Sirius is more than halfway there now, flying over the North Sea.

As he flies he imagines Remus learning about it, mourning him, and then moving on to a long and happy life. It’s a rose-tinged picture that would never have survived asking Remus what he thought, but Sirius hadn't asked.

Azkaban has no barbed wire, no alarms to go off if a prisoner tries to escape. There’s no need for all that, not when they're all trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought and most of them gone mad within weeks. There’s even less need for defenses, because not even a madman would attack Azkaban.

Sirius is sure he’s covered his tracks. He’s wound tighter than he ever was before a Quidditch game, more alert than in any fight, more scared than the first time he asked Remus to kiss him, 

**REMUS**

At 3 am, after running through seventeen different ways in which Sirius could have been captured or otherwise have died, Remus has long given up on sleep and got up for tea with Old Odgens to follow depending on how bad the night gets.  Then there’s a snake-like whispering at the door. Draco, Hermione, Harry and Ron crash into him and Harry starts shouting. ‘It’s not right.’ ‘You can’t think it’s right.’ ‘You’re supposed to love Sirius, how can you do this.’ 

Yes, thinks Remus hysterically. ‘I don’t love Sirius. That’s been the problem with my life all along. Indifference to Sirius Orion Black. That’s where I went wrong.’

What he he says is ‘what do you want from me?’

‘Sirius is flying to Azkaban’, Harry says. ‘He’s going to throw it off balance or something’.

Draco, for once, is glad not to be in the limelight here. He wants the story told, but he doesn’t want it traced back to him. It’s a complicated business being a Slytherin.

Remus remembers that he is supposed to be kind, so he tells them to go to bed before he shuts the door in their face.

Left alone he works out the quickest route to Azkaban from London, Apparates to where Sirius should have got to by now and finds nothing but howling wind and biting rain.

**SIRIUS**

Sirius would have been where Remus thought he was if he’ been at his Quidditch flying speed.

He’s not though. He’s not quite the wraith he was after Azkaban, but twelve years of half-starvation can’t be made good that quickly.

**HOGWARTS**

Hogwarts sends Draco, Harry, Hermione and Ron from Remus' rooms to the Room of Requirement and gathers up friends for them on the way - Luna who doesn't want to be alone tonight, Fred and George looking for mischief, Cedric Diggory who was woken by dreams of a goblet of fire and a prize that turned out to be a trap, Cho Chang looking for a fight and an adventure, Fleur Delacour because no one has ever kept Fleur out of somewhere she wanted to be, and Neville Longbottom bravest because the most afraid of them all. 

They find broomsticks and charts showing Sirius’ likely route towards Azkaban and how fast they will need to fly to catch him.

It’s exciting, being there in the middle of the night, with the great secret unfolding around them. Sirius Black is innocent, Sirius Black needs saving. They are young and they are all of them brave and they all of them know that there is a war starting soon.

So it doesn’t take much for them to decide to go off and rescue Sirius and not even Hermione thinks to count the cost and the consequences before they’re up on their broomsticks and then it’s cold and silent apart from the wind and nothing seems real.

Dumbledore meanwhile is fending off attacks from Molly Weasley, McGonagall and Olivander, all making different inroads on his conscience.

Deep below, in Peter’s cell, nothing changes. The light stays on, the walls stay still, the silence carries on. Rats are sociable beasts, and Peter has always needed warm bodies around him, needed people to watch and listen to. Left alone, left properly alone for the first time in his life, his own thoughts become unbearable to him. 

Dumbledore’s right on this as on most everything else. Not kind but right.

In the silence of the night Peter cracks and confesses. It’s done. Sirius can be pardoned.  The news travels fast through the secret ways of the castle and Fawkes zooms it up to Dumbledore's office and pecks at his ear until he pays attention.

**REMUS**

Remus figures out his mistake and flies back as fast as he can, still hoping to drag Sirius back to Cadair Idris and some kind of safety.

Instead he nearly crashes into Luna. She brings up her broom alongside him and Remus thinks she’s a dream, or a Boggart, but why would a Boggart pretend to be Luna? He likes Luna.

Then Fleur joins them and shouts over the wind ‘We need to save him. I am not co-parenting with a man who does nothing but mope over his dead lover’.

Remus has three distinct questions to ask her when Fred and George bowl in and then Neville Longbottom, Ron, Hermione and Harry.

Remus knows he should stop them, but that would mean giving up any chance of saving Sirius, so he doesn't.

His better nature knows that in doing so he’s betraying everything he ever thought to stand for, that he won’t save Sirius, that he’ll drag these children down with him, that the spiny clusterfuck that is his life will grow roots and branches in other people’s homes, that the Weasleys’ home will fall silent, that two dentists will grow old surrounded by photographs of a girl that had never grown up, but he carries on. 

The Dementors sense them half a mile out and crowd onto the roof, pawing at the air and willing them closer. Remus reaches into himself for his happiest memory (flying motorbike, London, fireworks) and fires a Patronus at them, but it's not enough to keep Harry on his broom. The boy slips and falls and that’s when Sirius reaches them and dives down to save Harry, but the Dementors have seen Sirius too and it’s all over, thinks Remus. It’s all over and everything’s falling apart. It’ll take a miracle to save us now.

**HOGWARTS**

Phoenixes are miracles, impossible birds, violations of the laws of nature.  They’re also pets and they would like you to remember that.  Sirius used to scratch Fawkes behind the ears. No one else did, no one dared. No one thinks that you might like head scratches when you’re a Phoenix. 

Sirius had walked up to him and stroked him until Fawkes had pushed his downy head into the boy’s hands and purred and purred and purred.

Fawkes knows that Dumbledore can be swayed. Dumbledore weighs up the good and the bad for each grey decision he has to make and finds more and more that there isn’t a right answer, there isn’t a heart/feather scale on which to measure lives. He’s losing the war and he knows (irrational, certain knowledge) that the way things are going like Moses he’s going to die before he sees the promised land. So Fawkes watches him, waiting to see which way he’ll jump and when Dumbledore looks straight at him, he pounces.

‘We could help Sirius’ Fawkes says. ‘Hear me out. One man’s memories won’t change anything, but millions of them? Millions of Muggle summers. All the rage and hate and joy and love from millions of summers, slam them onto Azkaban but don't let the Dementors feed on the people. It’d break them. It’d break the nasty slimy fuckers.’

Dumbledore’s about to say no, but Molly Weasley, McGonagall and Ollivander give an almighty combined tut and that tips the balance, just.

‘Do it’, Dumbledore says.

Fawkes hops with excitement. Ollivander, as ever mysteriously well prepared, hands McGonagall a new wand and she weaves together magic and memories from everywhere and everywhen since Sirius escaped.

In London and Newcastle, Carlisle and Dundee, in pubs and clubs and tubs, in bed and off their head, Muggles across the country feel a strange tugging twitching in their head. Then it's gone and with it any memory of the summer of ‘95 and its dangerous star, Sirius Black supervillain extraordinaire.

In the archives, silently, in bundled up piles for kindling, in the backrooms of newsagents, in 1s and 0s the headlines are changing, rearranging themselves. They’re not about Sirius any more, they’re about birds. Parakeets, Cockatoos, Wagtails, Lapwings. Article after article about how lovely birds are. Fawkes isn't subtle.

**REMUS AND SIRIUS**

Sirius catches Harry, and Remus dives down to them, flying faster than he ever has before and damn it’s cold and damn did it have to be raining, when new stars explode overhead

Because the sky above Azkaban isn't grey now. It’s all the colours of millions of Muggle summers - afternoons lazed away in parks, children finding new best friends, flirtations that go nowhere, flirtations that go everywhere. Red, orange, yellow green, blue, indigo, violet, Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain it’s all blurring together now and the Dementors are screaming and going up in flames and Merlin the smell.

Luna’s doing somersaults in the air now, Hermione looks like she knows she’ll write the history of this, Fred and George are singing pirate songs.

In the smoke and the mayhem Remus sees Sirius and Harry hugging and times passes so slowly that before he reaches them he has time to think that here finally is his family and also to think that most of the world will still hate him for what he is and who he loves and also to think that most of the world can go fuck themselves.


End file.
